


Another Day for Hate

by Vinsachi



Category: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017)
Genre: Explicit Language, M/M, Out of Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 21:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17874950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinsachi/pseuds/Vinsachi
Summary: There was something deep in Welby’s eyes while Jason was beating the shit out of him hip and thigh. That wasn’t anything even close to fear; that was something too close to disappointment, as if Jason had betrayed him.And rightly so, Jason had.





	Another Day for Hate

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Ещё один день для ненависти](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/458603) by leaving_minnesota. 



> To the endlessly wonderful acting of endlessly wonderful Sam Rockwell

Dixon has never felt such a powerful self-hate, until that luckless day. He should have marked it with a red ring in a calendar as enormously important because afterwards, everything changed dramatically.

 

The man was looking at the street through the police station stained windows, and his look kept running against the battered body of a red-haired boy who was lying still in a pool of his own blood while lookie-loos were surrounding him on all sides. That nigga prick Jason stumbled upon by the station doors a few minutes before was talking over the phone and pacing up and down as if he was a fucking mayor of this shitty town.

 

Somewhere in the far end of the street, the ambulance siren was screaming, and nausea kept crawling up Dixon’s throat.

 

Now, when the wave of choking wrath let him go, Dixon was literally drowning in a sense of guilt and was struggling to suppress an impulse to take his legs off the table, to get up and to check Red, just to ensure that the boy is still breathing, to ensure that he didn’t kill him.

 

But Dixon didn’t do that, for he was a coward and, for the record, a very busy one. He was trying to maintain a reputation of the most miserable and immoral cop of the town, so Dixon didn’t give a shit about Red Welby. He got better things to do than to think of a red-haired fellow with a foxy smile and an arrogant temper, so he kept his seat, rubbing the smashed knuckles. Jason found out a bit later that that nigga prick appeared to be a new deputy to old Willoughby who now appeared to be past history, and Dixon was predictably discharged. He didn’t miss a beat, didn’t show how strongly the new sheriff’s decision knocked him down, how the ground started slowly crumbling under his feet. He felt something of that kind when he learned about Willoughby’s suicide, and when his own father died. No, he didn’t miss a beat and just went back to things he was the best at. Dixon boozed to the condition of a dull, aggressive animal.

 

Yes, he did hate himself, his life, and this town stuffed with shizos. He was born here and has lived long enough to be hundred-per-cent sure that the majority of locals are absolute fuckheads. Well, except the late sheriff. He was a really good, kind-hearted man who, for reasons known to him only, didn’t snap fingers at Jason. Believed in him, even when Dixon went to seed himself. That Willoughby was a hell of a good guy, and those motherfucking billboards made him cut his life before time. And Willoughby left two infant girls and the desolate wife. It was a perfect model family, without domestic violence or alcohol abuse, where people loved each other for real without perverting this notion to anything disgusting and dirty.

 

Indeed, Dixon has never ever dreamt of any stuff like that.

 

Love in his family was expressed in a rather specific way: with battery, for example; so Jason scarcely knew anything about it, having some vague idea of normal, healthy relations, and just tried to delete his own childhood from memory.

 

If Dixon was raised in a normal family, no redhead homos would fall out of their windows.

 

But unfortunately, life took a different turn.

 

When Mildred Hayes treated him with a couple of Molotov cocktails, Dixon was even glad somewhere deep within.

 

For bad guys have always been riding the beef, and all their evil was coming back to haunt them thrice harder.

 

Jason didn’t remember where and when he had heard such a fuckery, this statement has always made him laugh crazily, considering the speed with which this stereotyped shit, straight from Disney fairy tales, got its ass smashed onto the real life with its injustice, brutality and all that liquid shit.

 

But at the moment when Dixon got fried like a piece of bacon, and ended up in the same ward Red was staying in, everything clicked into place. It was nearly a stroke of insight. Back then, he was willing to believe in kind magicians and in little yakky teeth-stealing fairies.

 

To believe in justice.

 

Somewhere deep within, the grim triumph was spreading, for it was the first time when his own pain muffled the monologue of his conscience, and the burden of guilt lifted off his shoulders, at least for a short time. He suffered more than the boy, and Dixon wanted to think that he’s kinds excusing to Red Welby with his exhausted, bandaged body, with his case, kinda sayin’, look, I’m in some serious shit again, come on, beat the shit out of me right on this bed, I won’t even resist.

 

But at the sound of that familiar voice, so full of deep sympathy, Dixon gave out and just started crying. Not in an instant, but tears filled his eyes at the sight what he did to Red Welby’s slim body and pretty face.

 

Dixon hated himself for having hurt a man who was guilty of nothing; a man who wouldn’t say boo to a fly. The entire town adored this little cocksucker, he was shining brighter than a fucking sun in its zenith, and looking at him meant the real pain to Dixon, dazzled his eyes. That was all about Welby but the cop simply went for him and threw him out of the window. The guy didn’t even have a moment to realize what had happened.

 

Couldn’t believe in what was happening.

 

There was something deep in Welby’s eyes while Jason was beating the shit out of him hip and thigh. That wasn’t anything even close to fear; that was something too close to disappointment, as if Jason had betrayed him.

 

And rightly so, Jason had.

 

And then he asked forgiveness, kept prattling miserably until the tears soaked the bandages under the eyes completely. He wasn’t even ashamed; he just wanted Red to yell at him, to hit his goddamn burnt face. Every-fucking-thing possible but not that juice. Not that expression on the boy’s face as if Red forgave him as early as he came round on a hospital bed.

 

First, a youngster gasped with a panic attack, then with tears. Slouched and kept snuffing, and rubbing his flushed, his smashed (handsome) face.

 

A shrill thought kept hitting his temple: Dixon doesn’t deserve this, neither Red’s forgiveness nor Red’s trust. He has never deserved these smiles which were so special, as if intended only for Jason Dixon, for an old blunt toast ready to flare up because of any little shit, not mentioning the Molotov cocktail that met the police station façade that warm summer evening.

 

Red seemed to understand everything for he’s far smarter than the most locals and, sure as hell, he knew that Dixon as been drooling over him for a long time, surmised, but instead of getting his shit together and moving to another state, or, at least, avoid the wacked cop, Red just kept smiling to him with that bitchy smile of a shrewd slut. Dixon had not the slightest idea where the hell would he hide all Red’s delicate nature at such moments, and a little weasel kept scoffing.

 

As if that shiny Red Welby would be interested in some muggled up fuckhead with zero self-control. Although Red understood everything, still he never looked at Dixon with disgust, just with interest, as if he was playing some waiting game.

 

Fuck if Dixon could get into all that stuff now.

 

Every goddamn day, Dixon hated himself with such a devotion, as if his life, and the existence of the entre mankind, depended on it, but for some reason, hate to Red Welby still kept outmatching it.

 

Dixon was opening his day with this salvational hate, instead of a prayer, convincing himself every fucking time that if he maintains this hate, at least artificially, like throwing brushwood into a bonfire, nothing else will appear. For it will leave no room for anything else.

 

Such a self-suggestion helped to stay afloat at the first, and then sheriff Willoughby destroyed everything with his message. Because every time he was stumbling upon the word ‘love’ in that goddamn letter, Dixon’s ashamed thoughts were rushing to freckled arms and garish shirts, to oranges and the flaming sun which makes the eyes weep, and black spots keep dancing under the eyelids for a long time afterwards.

 

Dixon was allergic to citrus fruits, and still he drank the offered juice. He would drink it even if Red decided to pour poison into the glass. And Dixon had a strong hope for some effect, beside allergy, for it was already unbearable to stare at that back, not covered with a hospital shirt. Unbearable to suppress a wish to trace these vertebras with fingers, and then to die of heart attack or of happiness.

 

He would deal with that later.

 

That fucking Red Welby drove him mad for all hate to him burned away together with the skin on Dixon’s much-suffering body. Now he wasn’t able anymore to feel anything like hate to this affecting red-haired boy.

 

He could only feel something painful, large and scary.

 

Dixon was tired like fuck to fight himself; and if he only knew a shit about normal, healthy human relations, if he wasn’t such an unbearable asshole, and if his old ever-drunk mom didn’t fucking beat him all his childhood, then at this very moment, Dixon could accept the fact that a large and scary thing was suspiciously resembling love.

 

But that ain’t love.

 

That ugly, perverse and wrong feeling raised no wish to be called love, and a person like Red Welby definitely had no need of it.

 

The little fellow didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve pathetic confessions from a ball-breaker who beat a hell out of him, and then threw him out of the window, the one who was used to intimidate him and to booze-breathe at his neck every time he met him in a lousy bar.

 

He deserved better than that.

 

But Jason Dixon had nothing else to offer. Nothing but this feeling and the ephemeral promise to change. At least for Welby’s sake. Because, holy hell, the boy forgave him. Dixon knew not why, and didn’t ask back then. Maybe he was scared of something.

 

And if the ex-cop Dixon really understood a thing about this life, he would finally realize that this fragile and tender feeling Red Welby was by no means proud of, but was treasuring it in his heart, was meant for the one and only man in their motherfucking Ebbing.

 

For even such a man as Jason Dixon deserved forgiveness.

 

And he deserved love.


End file.
